Lucifer Comet (2464 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  “Are you telling us,” Methuen demanded, “that your spear-focused power created the five-forty-six gradient?”

  “Not at all. My spear-focused power sent Narfar instantaneously to Dora; and it was his instantaneous transit which homogenized the gradient.”

  Zorbin: “Before we pursue that, let me draw you back to the question, why and how you followed Narfar there.”

  “I followed him after he had been there five or six or seven thousand years; in those days we were all careless about time-definition. I did this when I had mind-perceived across space that Narfar was not keeping his promise: he was building a social order which made man the peer but not the master of other animals, which exalted tradition and enslaved creativity within the bounds of Narfar-lore; he was perpetuating the situation by being always present before the eyes of his people as their god-king. How did I follow him, Zorbin? I just went, instantaneously, along the five-forty-six gradient which was the way requiring least effort:”

  “Thank you,” Zorbin acknowledged; “I trust this is not seeming to be a discourteous—grilling, as we say in police dramas.”.

  “Not at all, sir; you are being most courteous, and I want to tell you what I can.”

  “Then tell me this. You saw the mizdorf constellation and the Dora-star from Erth and you have given Dorita good eyeball-information about the relative brightnesses of the stars in that constellation as seen from Dora. But also, you told Dorita about the relative temperatures and chemical compositions of those stars; and this is not eyeball-information. You must have explored and analyzed those stars; you must know what constellation they compose.”

  “Truly, I have made no exploration or analysis, I simply intuit such facts, they come into me and I know they are right And I was not playing a game with you at the planetarium. I suspect hut I do not know, that Mizdorf is the constellation you call Orion, that Saiph is the Dora-star. My remembrance of dispatching Narfar is almost sixty millennia old; and we did not then call constellations by your names or even see them in your configurations, and the whole business is now rather foggy. If, in the planetarium tomorrow, I can look at your constellation Orion as it would appear from Saiph, then perhaps I can reorient my gestalt and tell you for sure. In all candor, it is really like that.”

  Zorbin nodded and meditated. Methuen took it up: “Our next pressing question would have to be, how you and Narfar were trapped in the comet.”

  Again Qarfar smile-frowned down. “Narfar’s entrapment was on purpose. My own was a little mistake.

  “I had been doing a year-long reconnaissance of Dora; and Narfar got wind of my presence, and up went his wind. Above Dora’s northern ice cap he came out to challenge me. It was final showdown, and I tried to persuade him to go away, but he kept coming, shrieking his intent to kill me, although killing was not what I wanted for either of us.

  “The planetary situation inspired me with a tactic. With my spear I distance-drew a broad circle on the ice directly beneath us and called up Dora’s vulcanism at that point; as intended, Dora blew off a chunk of ice at escape velocity. My intent was that the ice would entrap Narfar and carry him remotely away from Dora before he would find means of escape; he would never find his way back, so he would alight on some planet and work out his destiny. Unhappily for me, I didn’t get away fast enough: the ice caught me and Narfar almost at the same instant; its surface was slushy still from atmospheric friction-heat, we sank into it facing each other, we were caught in the space-freeze. I suppose I was too shaken by the surprise of it to collect my thoughts and use my will and my spear to get myself out; and when I did collect my thoughts, it was too late for changing directions.”

  He arose with effort, pushing himself erect with his spear-haft. “Forgive me, I am more weary tonight than I ever am normally; perhaps it is from the soul-excitement of the day. May I be excused?”

  “Please, one more question first,” Methuen urged. “Is it with your spear that you would execute your threat against Erth?”

  “What threat against Erth?”

  “That if necessary, you would explode Erth to make a comet in the hope of getting back to Dora.”

  Quarfar hand-wiped his forehead on which a few drops of perspiration glistened. “I am sorry, I gave all of you the wrong impression, I did not sufficiently restrict the meaning of my word ‘explode.’ I meant only that I would find some unpeopled area in one of your polar ice caps and explode myself outward on that?

  “Then you mean no harm to Erth?”

  “Why should I harm Erth? It is my planet.”

  He started for his bedroom. He paused, turned, and added with a wan smile, “One urgent caution which is also a request. Do not reveal to anyone, not even to the members of your task force, what I have told you tonight—not any of it, not even my knowledge of Anglian. It is a caution because they would not believe you and so you would be discredited. It is a request because, in questions of factual knowledge, humans must always have free rein to inquire and discover in terms of their own resources; they should never be fettered by supranormal revelation.”

  He turned toward his bedroom, then turned again. “One more thing since you mentioned threat. On Dora there is a potential threat to Erth; but whether and how that threat may be realized will depend on my interplay with a woman named Dorita.”

  14

  Night deepened in Central Park; it was too late for all except lovers, and even these did not penetrate the lagooned copse where Narfar crouched on a tree-branch. A quarter-moon fully awakened Narfar, creating ages-old stirrings in his groin once aroused by the two small moons of Mars, then successively reinforced by the single splendid moon of that other planet and the single modest moon of Dora. He was aware of his beloved beasts about him: owls and other night birds, incautious nocturnal squirrels, fish in the lagoon. Needing no syrinx, Narfar trilled a complex low whistling, finger-playing on his lips; the beasts gathered below and around him, even the fish poked heads above water in his direction: they communed with him, some of them even answered him.

  The Narfarian trilling ceased; the beasts drifted away. Narfar was miserable, the beasts had helped him very little. He was not home; he was so far from home that he did not know where home was, or when it was. To make it worse, Quarfar was somewhere about, unless Quarfar had already beaten Narfar back to Dora. Having once found courage to go out and face Quarfar, Narfar did not find it in his guts to try it again; yet sooner or later, Quarfar would find him.

  Huddling in the crotch where the limb joined the tree-bole, wing-cloaking himself, Narfar squeezed shut his eyes and crowded knuckles against forehead-slope, laboring to think out the problem. But the gift of sustained systematic thought was not one of his gifts. How to learn where home was? how to deal with Quarfar? These two questions were straining his limits of formulation, and they were so different from each other that he could not think about both at once, yet somehow they were so conjunctive that he could not separate them. Eventually he gave it up, shuddered all over, then welcomed the respite of a beautiful impulse: another good night like last night!

  Again he bat-flew the city, cruising particularly the residential apartment areas; and it wasn’t very long before he was attracted by a frustrated-widow smell on 71st Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

  Somewhat later, in a different quarter of the city, he was arrested by quite another sort of smell—the smell of Quarfar. Narfar, shocked and frightened, arrested himself in midflight and located the smell source. It came from down there—that window, on the—what floor? Narfar counted on fingers: one, two, three, four, five stories up. The window was dark; indeed, only one window in the building was lighted, and that was remote from this one.

  With effort, he brought all his conflicting feelings under control by one immediately dominant feeling: see what the situation is, and go from there. On that basis, he descended to hover near Quarfar’s window, smelling and otherwise sensing.

  Quarfar it was, and he was asleep in there. But somethi
ng was wrong. …

  Molecularizing himself, Narfar passed among the molecules of window-glassoid and stood beside the bed of his brother, seeing and smelling and sensing him clearly in darkness. Quarfar slept like a babe, raw, lying on his right side facing Narfar, legs drawn up, left hand clutching his spear, head pillowed on right hand on pillow. But Quarfar at moments became a restless sleeper, quivering, stiffening, with an abnormal hoarsenesss in his breathing. And there was perspiration on the forehead of Quarfar, although the night was comfortably cool.

  Narfar’s brother-enemy: defenseless here, and beginning to be sick with something here. With the greatest of ease, Narfar could fang him, and that would be the end of Narfar’s troubles forever. On the other hand, Quarfar his brother was sick with something; and Narfar could cure him here and now, being able to charm all beasts visible and invisible.

  Which was Quarfar most to Narfar—mostly enemy, or mostly brother? Oh shit, he had to think again! He crouched on the floor beside Quarfar, crowding knuckles into forehead—and smelled a new smell.

  Well, he couldn’t think efficiently until he had found out about that!

  The new smell was frustrated female, all right, and it was strong and near. But the frustration was not the same sort, not at all; this was like rut-urge, but not exactly the same, so it was different, but still most enticing. And the woman was young, for a change. And she was just in the next room.

  Abandoning the problem of Quarfar, Narfar penetrated the wall. He found Dorita lying supine and uncovered on a sofa, with hands folded behind head and elbows out. As a concession to the cause of good order in an apartment with three men, Dorita, who preferred to sleep raw, was wearing semisheer black pajamas. She was, of course, a funny child; on the other hand, the prejudice of Narfar against funny children for pleasure purposes had been somewhat mollified by the experiences of two nights; and this one was a perplexing mixture of funny child and funny mature woman.

  The very young woman’s eyes were closed, but they were aimed up at Narfar; she was not asleep, only musing on the verge of slumber. He tasted her thought-feelings: they were a delicious pudding, a jungle, with shadowings of mysterious indefinable secrets which were untouchable but perhaps ought to be touched. Her nipples were erect as though she were erotically aroused; but erotic wasn’t quite what her arousal was, not quite. …

  It was worth pursuing. He could tell in her mind that she was eligible for him; that she was none of the sorts of innocence which were tabu for him, nor was she the sort whose extensive experience repelled him.

  He went telepathically into his dream-weaving routine: You asleep, you dreaming. Me a dream, a good dream for you….

  Her eyelids flicked back. She seemed unstartled. She examined him head to toe, wingtip to wingtip; she gave particular attention to that which was imposingly, quiveringly erect. Lazily then she asserted in his tongue, not changing her position: “I not asleep, not dreaming. You Narfar, you excited. Answer for now is no; maybe later, we see.”

  She watched his gradual detumescence. “Good,” she said. “Now we talk. Here, sit beside me.” Still supine, she squeezed over against the sofa back to make more room; and she patted the sofa edge, smiling at him.

  Obediently Narfar sat facing her face with his wings together-clasped behind him (he didn’t quite know what else to do with them). This incredible child—yes, she was a child-seemed to be taking charge; and amazingly, he was liking it.

  She patted a hairy Narfar-thigh. “Poor Narfar. You far from home. Why you run away from us?” She was talking high-rapidly, he was actually just-understanding her.

  From his recent experience with Erth-women, he grasped that they talked lower and slower than he, almost as low-slow as Quarfar; and so he answered slow and low: “You catch me in box, I see out, but it box. I know quick you people here all funny Quarfar-people. I run away.” Narfar was not talking down to her, the diction was normal for him.

  Slowly she ran a hand over his thigh-crest, barely touching the thigh, touching rather his orange-red hair-tips; it brought on a semi-tumescence, and quickly she drew her hand away, “Poor Narfar. We not your enemy. Quarfar your enemy?”

  “Yes.”

  “‘You fear Quarfar?”

  “Yes ”

  ‘Tell why.”

  “Quarfar want to kill me.”

  “Tell why.” Her voice caressed him, although no longer did she touch him.

  It all came out of him in a twitter-blurt, so that she could not catch his rapid words but had to follow his mind-action. “I make world for beasts, somewhere, dunno where, maybe here. Quarfar not like, he change world for funny people. I not like. I go to Dora, make world for men and beasts. Quarfar follow me later. I think he want to kill me because he not like new world I make either. I go to fight Quarfar, save my world. Something happen, somehow we both go to sleep, wake up here. Where is here?’

  Laboriously synchronizing the words and the thought-train, Dorita felt that she had made full-enough sense of it; and certainly in its own crude way it checked with Quarfar’s account. She told Narfar then: “Here is Erth. Erth is where you first make world for beasts, where Quarfar first come and change to world for funny people. You think I funny person, yes?” He nodded. “I think I just woman, our men just men, not funny—well, some funny, but most not. We masters of beasts; we try to help them, but they die because we so strong. What about your Dora?”

  He sat proudly upright, expanding chest, extending arms and wings; in a primitive way, he was really quite splendid; Dorita felt her nippples rehardening; she quelled it. “Dora world for men and beasts—for men and women and beasts. Not funny people like you, just people—like me, only no wings, and color different. I learn from Quarfar, but I do better. On Dora, masters, - servants, beasts, everybody know place, everybody happy. I king!”

  Dorita considered him with melancholy. She told him: “You and Quarfar, you caught in comet, brought here to Erth in comet You gone many many years from Dora.”

  He stared at her. He said, “Shit again, I got to think again.” And he bowed head, folded wings, drove knuckles into forehead. Dorita didn’t have the word for shit from Quarfar, but she caught the mental sense. Holding in a smile, she waited.

  Narfar looked up: “How long many many years?”

  Going to telepathy, she conveyed the sense of a man being bom and growing old and dying, another man the same, and so on, one after another, man after man after man, many many men. She went further: no telling about glaciers on Dora, but Narfar had undoubtedly known glaciers on Erth; and she filled his mind with a picture of a continental glacier laboriously advancing and prolongedly pausing and indolently receding. She said, “That long.”

  He looked at her with new interest You mind-talker mind-listener like me?

  “Yes.”

  He frowned. “But I gone from Dora so long—Dora might even be dead now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody there remember me? I not king any more?” “Maybe.”

  Seizing her hands, he leaped up and pulled her off the sofa. “Then we have fun here, yes? I fly up to sky with you, we schlurp in sky—yes?”

  She held him off, insisting: “No! Not now! Not on Erth, not in sky! Nor He let go one of her hands and stared. ‘Tell why not?” Dorita had found the approach to her purpose.

  Firmly she told him, flooding his mind with affirmative suggestion: “You go back to Dora. Take me with you. Maybe I be your woman on Dora. Maybe.”

  He let go her other hand and stared, alternately tumescent and semi-detumescent, while she dropped onto the sofa and ran a hand back through her sweat-wet hair and stared up at him. She was more aroused than he, but in a different way. He was powerful-impulsive enough to rape her at will, to take her up into the sky at will. She could not have resisted and would not have wanted to resist—except that her long-range purpose was beginning to formulate itself, it somehow involved Dora and some Dora-secret that she had sensed in both Quarfar and Narfar without having graspe
d the nature of the secret. A wild sky-fling now with a bat-flying Neanderthal, appealing as it was from a viewpoint of unprecedented perversity, might drain all the heat from Narfar’s arousal, and he might never take her to Dora. And Quarfar, she knew now from within him, could never be seduced into taking her there. Quarfar was a magnificent loner, in solitude as the Loving Unlovered Allfather he nurtured his humans and fought their enemies; and he was much too wise to be Dorita diddled….

  Narfar demanded: “But where Dora?’*

  She was improvising rapidly, but with solid background. She went to mind-talk, it was better: I think I know where Dora is, but I will know for sure when night comes again. When I know, I will tell you. You come again tomorrow night.

  What I do in between?

  You’ll think of something.

  But how I get to Dora even if I know?

  How did you get there the first time?

  Quarfar send me. I just go.

  How long did it take you to go?

  No time. I just think go, 7 there.

  Via the five-forty-six gradient, obviously. Whether Narfar could take her to Dora without killing her en route in subzero airless interstellar space, gradient or no gradient, was a question which Narfar would be quite incapable of answering.

  The thought she now projected was obbligatoed by a rose garden of demure love with endless indefinite promise. Go your ways now, dear Narfar, go. Do whatever you want to do in between, fly to the moon, charm bats, make love, anything at all; but go now. Come back about the same time when night comes again, and we will see what is next for us together. Will you do that for Dorita?

  He gazed at her with rallying tumescence. His mind let out one boiling YES! and he turned and crashed outward through a window, having forgotten to demolecularize himself.